I've Got Mail

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "My children and grandchildren gave me a party for ...":

I did not understand Candy Olson's comments after you called her on the carpet. Her only defense seemed to be, "You don't understand how school board meetings work." It made no sense at all. Basically, she does not want the public to be a part of the school board meeting, and when someone has the audacity to be a part of it, she chastises that person as being ignorant of school board meetings and protocol. This is another way of saying, "Shut up and let me sit here and allow Elia to get away with whatever she wants to! Quit bothering me to do anything about anything!"

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Posted by Anonymous to Lee Drury De Cesare's Casting-Room Couch at 2:45 PM

I don't know what it is about me, but I set Ms. Olson off. Maybe that has to do with our first encounter.

I was helping a gay friend of mine, Bart Birdsall, to try to get the board to recognize the bullying of gay kids in the schools and the need for seminars to teach teachers how to deal with this problem. They all resisted. They didn't want to lose the bigot vote and to hell with the bullied gay kids.

From some source I heard a teacher at a school had a copy of the Bible on his desk from which he lectured a gay boy in his class about how he was going to hell if he didn't repent and become straight.

Since Olson was board member from my old Beach Park district in Tampa, I wrote her to complain.

She wrote back and said, "The last time I checked, we have free speech in this country."

Ms. Olson's Achilles heel is that she wants to be a wit but has zilch talent to construct bon mots. She usually dredges up some chestnut that has been around since Noah's Ark popped up. She lacks the brains and the wit for ripostes. When the addlepated Carol Kurdell jumped on April Griffin for objecting to no-bid contracts, accusing her of being "disloyal" to the splendid staff, Candy said, "You go, girl!" and looked around for praise for her wit. That's how her mind works, poor thing.

I emailed her one of my stern rebukes, cited separation of church and state, reviewed how the Bible could find use in literature classes as the great piece of Western literature that it is, etc. but said a teacher can't keep a copy on his desk and terrorize a gay kid with it.

That shut La Candy up. She only nips at my heels when I am retreating from the podium. I hear her nattering following me as I exit down the aisle.

On the 15th, I think she said that I didn't know how the school board functioned (yes I do: the school board is the elected asskissers of the superintendent; they volunteered for that job instead of for standing up for the taxpayers, the students, and the teachers); I believe she also said that anybody should know the difference between fact and fiction that "we teach that in grammar school."

Her remarks are usually meant to diminish me. Fat chance.

Ms. Olson's been on the board too long. I am begging a young Beach Park woman who is a friend of one of my daughters and a teacher to run against Candy the next go round.

Ms. Olson will never be a good board member. She is a coward who follows whoever in charge. I am sure that some injury to her psyche in childhood catalyzed that coping reaction, but it is not pretty.

Candy is a follower; she can never be a leader. If a good person were superintendent, Candy would follow him or her; if a bad one such as Elia is in charge, ditto.

Since I sent copies of my emails to Candy about the Bible-thumping teacher to the school's principal, the principal, a wise woman, shut down the teacher's cruel Bible seminars in his classes.

lee